


It's not running away... it's moving on

by Damned_Writers



Series: the long road home [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Augmentation Discussions, Childhood Abuse, Gen, Post-Canon, The Squiggly Nature Of Familial Abuse, Trans Julian, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24040795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damned_Writers/pseuds/Damned_Writers
Summary: After almost everyone has left Deep Space Nine, Julian finds himself getting nightmares he thought he'd outgrown. He's not sure what they mean, but he's pretty sure their coinciding with the release of his father and imminent visit from his mother isn't a coincidence.Part two of the long road home: A series exploring the lives of Julian, Kira, and Garak after the end of the Dominion War. The fics can be read as one shots, or together.
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Kira Nerys
Series: the long road home [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744279
Comments: 19
Kudos: 42





	It's not running away... it's moving on

**Author's Note:**

> Me writing introspective fics about characters analysing their own trauma post-canon? it's more likely than you think (have I made this joke before, I think I have). 
> 
> Anyway I'm beginning to think that a fair few of my fics take place within the same HC so as I keep writing I'll sort of... gradually see if I want to collate them into a series of what I think happens post-canon. We shall see.

Year: 2375

_____________________

The storm raged around him and the girl and then, all at once, became temperate earthen climates. They were surrounded by fields, the cave was gone, a stream stretched sedately into the distance. She sat up and thanked him and walked off, or she lay still while he tried to tell her _look, it's fine there is no storm,_ over and over- and he woke up halfway through a sentence, expecting her to be lying cold and still next to him.

It took his father too long to come back for them. The one time he'd actually tried to get something right, which maybe was fate telling him something. And maybe this time it hadn't been his fault in any way, neither of them had known about the plant or where to go for help, but it was still emblematic of everything Julian thought of him.

Julian sometimes wondered if Richard Bashir's nature came from failures like the one when they hadn't saved the girl. Perhaps his vaguely-known youth had been full of him honestly trying and failing again and again. After awhile he'd externalised them by putting them on other people and stopped trying at all, so even when something legitimately wasn't his fault it still became a part of his churning narcissistic need to never ever be in the wrong. Or maybe even that was giving him too much credit. Julian may not have been able to save that girl, but he'd made damn sure he wouldn't fail again. Richard had simply blamed everyone around him and continued to do so. Julian even had memories of himself being put at fault for having let her die, some kind of disappointment directed his way by Richard, but there were so many of those he couldn't entirely sort out what had been said to him when any more.

But Julian was the one who still got to dream about the girl. Sometimes she transformed into himself, some version of him he recognised in dream state, but wasn't really him. Jules. God, his subconscious was heavy-handed, but that didn't make it any less of a head fuck. The worst thing was that he couldn't remember her name. He knew she'd said it, but... he'd spent so many hours of his life agonising over it, but for some reason it was one thing that just didn't stick. Everything else post-augmentation was one bright image, but she was like a distorted reflection in a rippled pond.

So much for perfect memory.

He was dreaming more about her, predictably, because Richard had been released. All those years of being afraid he'd be caught out and stuck in an institution for the rest of his life and all Richard got was two years for violating his child and then making him fear himself, fear others reactions, just... fear. And now Julian was going to live with closed doors and others' suspicions and suspended rights until the laws were changed or he died. Out of the two of them, Richard had got off easy. Julian wondered whether he'd at least had time to feel like he'd done something wrong, to take responsibility... but he doubted it. There might be some glimmer of remorse that would satisfy his mother and then they'd be back to pretending that Julian had always been ungrateful for all the sacrifices they'd made for him and going to prison would just be another one.

Oh, that was right, he remembered as he got blearily out of bed _(tonight the girl had been alive, running away from him and he'd tried to say... something),_ Amsha had sent him a letter. She was coming to visit him. Just her, she wrote, as though she wanted to reassure him. _I have some news, it would be best to speak in person._ She was arriving on the station. He couldn't remember his mother ever being apart from his father. A couple of times where she'd comforted him when he was crying about this or that, but always with Richard in the next room.

Strange. Last time she'd been here everything had changed. Now everything had changed again just before her arrival. Only himself, Colonel Kira, and Quark were left onboard from the original group. Ezri had set off only a few days ago and everyone else had gone around a month before that. She'd told him as they'd said goodbye that he should remind himself that it was okay to need some adjustment time. They'd both gone too fast into something in the thrill of not-being-dead and quickly realised they were just desperate to hold onto something familiar. Her taking on a new commission was really what was best. They could meet again as friends one day, properly.

Didn't help the long nights spent either awake or dreaming of the girl, but then nothing would help that. Certainly not Amsha stopping by for whatever bit of sanctimonious defence of his father she was obviously going to be setting up – _you're a war hero now, he's so proud of you. He wants to know what you're doing next, you can't stay on this derelict old station. There's nothing in it for a someone with your skill-set and your father will have put his life on hold for nothing._

He got dressed and went through the motions of his daily routine. Breakfast in his room, checking on any updates before heading to ops to get a debriefing from Kira. It wasn't necessary for him to actually go there, but the two of them had silently agreed on seeing one another at least once a day. Sometimes when he sat awake in medical long after the majority of the inhabitants had gone to bed he would find her joining him, either wanting to talk or just sitting in silence to watch him work. He didn't appreciate the insomnia, but he much preferred spending time with her over dreaming about the girl.

Julian knew that she was in talks to get a promotion. Eventually he'd be left with trying to solicit Quark into drinks or he'd have to leave the station himself, but where would he go with his brilliant record as a CMO and tarnished reputation as an augment? Best not to think about that today, there was already enough to think about.

Kira looked worried when he arrived. “Colonel, is everything alright?”

“Yeah, everything's fine. Looks like it's shaping up to be a slow day, so you can take that afternoon off unless there's an emergency.”

He sighed. “Nerys, look, there's really no need-”

“I _know_ last time you saw her wasn't under the best of circumstances, but I think it'd be better like this.”

He made a face. He'd told her Amsha was coming by, because she would probably have found out anyway and wouldn't have appreciated not hearing it from him. Also she was his friend. A couple of nights ago she'd asked him about it and he'd admitted to being – not _scared,_ but... worried. A tad anxious. She'd decided that giving him time to sort things out between them was the best idea, completely misunderstanding what he wanted, but it wasn't her fault really. He hadn't ever told her everything, just that their relationship was... difficult, considering his father. He hadn't mentioned that Amsha, while not as direct in her moulding of him, had always expected a certain gratitude and had a possessive streak to her that she handed out as a prize for him doing well. She may have been in his father's shadow, but she'd always helped to make it that much darker.

“If I call you -”

“Yes, I know. Invent a medical emergency.” She smiled and placed a hand on his arm. “Good luck.”

He exhaled deeply. “Thank you.”

____________________

He waited in the hallway for Amsha's runabout to arrive, fidgeting and bouncing up and down and then immediately forcing himself to still when the doors opened. She was one of the last to step out and the entire time he felt his body going ever more rigid with tension, as if he were frozen in place as an unseen Jem'Hadar unit approached on a base during the war and not his own mother, safe and sound on DS9.

It was practically anticlimactic when he saw her at last. A short and well-dressed woman. Nothing monstrous about her at all. “Hello Jules, -Julian,” she corrected herself.

“Hi, mum,” he said.

They hugged awkwardly before he straightened up as though a good posture would keep him from trying to crawl out of his skin. He felt guilt, as usual, at that feeling. His mother was never violent, never loud, never much of anything. Just endless iterations of _listen to your father, do what your father says, your father knows what's best, your father is only trying to help you..._ followed by holding onto his hands when he didn't want to be held, making him hug her in front of other parents when he beat their kids to become first in his various classes, showing him off at dinners...

But she'd called him Julian. That was already something different, filed away as an anomaly to be poked at once she had gone again. He cleared his throat. “Have you... eaten anything?”

“Not yet.”

He gestured down the corridor and they walked together to the replicators. “How are you, Julian?” She sounded out his name like it was uncomfortable to her. It made Julian think back to the day that Richard had “decided” to go to prison. It had been a surprise turn-about when he was all but sure that he was about to tender his resignation and leave Starfleet and Deep Space Nine for good. He remembered that Richard had even called him Julian as a peace-offering. He remembered putting up a brief fight to keep him from being arrested. He remembered promising to visit. Feeling... hopeful. Like he could breathe a bit better.

It hadn't lasted. Stupid, really. Naive, when he thought he'd grown out of naivety by then. After exchanging some communiques with Richard it had become clear that one deed couldn't wipe the slate clean. Moreover it couldn't change who Richard Bashir was and the messages had quickly twisted into hints that Julian owed him an even bigger debt. Julian ended the communication after six months and had never visited. He'd also never contacted his mother.

 _How am I? Do you really want to know?_ “I'm fine,” he said. “How are you?” _God, how were they expected to keep this up for a whole day? Was it too early to request a medical emergency?_

“I am doing well. And your father, - well, that's why I wanted to speak with you.”

Of course it was about Richard. Everything revolved around him in the end.

Julian led her to a chair and got them both a meal. It was blissfully empty today, although that lowered the chances of any fight-related incidents needing his attention. Where was an angry drunk when you actually needed one? Usually he'd send his junior doctor or a nurse to deal with that sort of thing, but today he would accept any scrape or mild cough as worthy of his time.

He waited for her to speak, feeling like he was being unfair again as he watched her desperately try to find the right place to begin. He wasn't trying to punish her, he just... had no idea what they had to talk about.

“You haven't spoken to him recently, have you?” she asked in a way that seemed both blunt and to be skirting around the issue. Julian briefly imagined Garak to be sitting opposite instead, obscuring every true meaning behind half-truths, lies, and obfuscations. It made his chest ache. _You truly don't realise a good thing until it's gone, huh._ He hadn't enjoyed lunchtime since Garak had left and even while Ezri was here had preferred to meet her for any other meals. Like lunch was reserved, but nobody was there to take up the reservation. He felt like a permanently stood up date, which, considering that it was himself who'd gradually eroded their relationship, was laughably just.

Garak had taught him to look out for those little bits of truths in obscure sentences. In this case obviously something had happened between his parents, something big. By her cautious expression he couldn't tell if it was good or bad, but clearly she was planning on modulating her way of telling him depending on his answer.

He shook his head. “Why, has something happened?”

She let out a small relieved huff of air. “I... it's been coming for the last year he was being held, but I decided – we've decided – that our relationship, as it was, could no longer work.”

Julian, despite feeling like he'd had a suspicion, still needed a moment. She was leaving him – _had_ left him? Never in a million years could he have seen Amsha possessing that kind of strength of will. He understood why she'd hoped to be the first to tell him. Richard would have been furious and presumably had threatened to tell Julian any number of hideous things surrounding her choice. For what felt like the first time in his life, Julian reached across the table and took his mother's hand without feeling like he was being forced to. He squeezed it gently.

“Are you okay? Staying with anyone who can support you?” he asked.

“I'm living alone actually,” she said. “For the first time. I have a nice place. I wanted to tell you. While he was gone I suddenly had so much time I didn't know what to do with. It took me awhile, but I began sorting through the whole house. Papers and schematics of old schemes, half-finished projects. I found some pictures of you, from when you were five.”

His eyes went wide. “I thought that everything from before was destroyed.”

She dug into her purse and handed him a chip. “They're on here. Not many. I kept them without telling anyone. I feel...” she let out a breath. “Well, you know.”

Julian removed his hand from hers as if burnt. “I really don't,” he said, remembering all over again that it had never been the two of them versus Richard. She'd never told him about these photos and like his father had never acknowledged that what they had done had hurt him. She'd never even asked him about what had been done to him on Adigean Prime, as if he'd gone in for a routine doctor's visit and come out without any scars to show for his constantly over-stimulated brain being forced into taking in data he previously hadn't been able to sift through. He'd never talked to her about how after the enhancements he'd started processing information in ways that made his head hurt, how he had the sensation of being not-in-the-right-skin, how much it cost him to keep himself contained in something Just About Passing For Normal, how much he'd been afraid his whole life. Not just of others finding out. But of not living up to hers and Richard's expectations and what would happen if he didn't. There had always been an air of blackmail hanging over their needs for him and she had never done anything to dispel that idea. No, she had always been firmly on the other side, supporting every one of Richard's ideas.

“I really don't,” he repeated and sat back, putting even further distance between them. “Did you feel nostalgic? Sad? Guilty?”

“Jules- Julian,” she looked so put-upon that he might have withdrawn his attack if not for the slip.

“Why did you come all this way?”

“To tell you about me and your father. And to give you these.”

“You could have sent them, and the news,” he said tersely.

“I wanted to see you,” she said. “To see... we all kept hearing about Deep Space Nine throughout the war, I was worried.”

He scoffed. “Oh, I'm sure you were very worried about your investment getting hurt. After all, dad went to prison for it. Wouldn't do to make all of _your_ work go to waste.”

“Why do you always turn everything into a fight? I'm trying.”

“Do you know a strange side-effect of my augmentations?” he said, quietly now, not because he was any less angry, but because he still fought a certain shame when talking about these things to anyone. It was a rhetorical question. Amsha and Richard had never really known much about his enhancements beyond the obvious – stronger, taller, smarter.

“Eidetic memory,” he continued after a moment. “I remember almost everything from the age of seven years old. Every time you took his side when he told me that I was ungrateful, squandering my _gifts,_ not living up to my potential, when he manipulated me into doing what he wanted or yelled at me or made me feel... small...” As he spoke, his voice rose again and he straightened, but by the end the brief surge of whatever had propelled him forwards left him once more and he slumped back. “You were always there, afterwards... telling me everything was fine. Trying to... defuse the situation somehow. Telling me that I was overreacting. And even though I remember almost every moment _perfectly_ I still doubt myself. Sometimes I think maybe it was just lack of courage on your part, but then I remember the way you'd take me by the hand or hug me... like the carrot to his stick.” They sat in silence for a few seconds as she simply looked at him, unreadable, and then he sighed. “I don't want to fight. I'm happy for you.”

Their food sat, untouched, before them. Julian had a suspicion that Amsha had as much urge to eat it as himself, so stood up, taking his tea with him. “You didn't really get a chance to see the station last time you were here, did you?”

She shook her head and stood as well. For the next couple of hours they avoided any further subjects that could lead to another outburst. Julian already felt awful about it, not so much because it wasn't true, but because he'd long ago made the decision to keep it all bottled up. He still occasionally cringed at the last time she and Richard had visited, when he'd let slip to Miles his feeling of being unnatural, confessed to Richard about Jules' death. He'd thought that he'd moved past that kind of futile, childish anger.

Eventually Amsha began to circle back to the main conversation point as her time on the station began to draw to a close and he walked her back to the runabout. “I wanted to tell you, that little house that I now have isn't on earth.”

“You left earth?”

“Earth felt too small in these last two years. I wanted to make something that wasn't your father's to claim.”

Julian laughed at that. “He would take the praise for the last hundred years of Federation history if he could.”

She allowed herself a smile. “I thought to myself that it would be easier to find out what I wanted far away.”

“Where?”

“A planet in Vulcan space. Nothing that is too unfamiliar.” They stopped in front of the hatch. Five minutes until take-off. She seemed to be trying to discern something in his face, before she finally said: “Do you think that my Jules could ever come back?”

Julian tried not to let his initial hurt show. He wished that he hadn't been surprised, even after all this. There would always be something that Amsha wanted from him that he couldn't give. She might not have been _ashamed,_ but she was always unsatisfied.

He shook his head, allowing his voice to remain calm. “I've been Julian for longer than I was ever Jules and it feels... right. Not a pretence.” He had so many words on the tip of his tongue that he would never tell her. That Julian wasn't just a different name, but a different life, a different gender, a different mind, how when he'd said the last time that Jules was dead it wasn't entirely what he'd meant, but at that time he had been too angry and too confused to understand it himself. Jules was a confused child who didn't have the words for himself and seemed to exist in a different life, but Julian had increasingly begun to feel protective of him. It wasn't Jules' fault that all of this had happened, or that he hadn't had the words for himself. Julian had for several years wanted to forget that Jules was ever real, but he'd begun to understand that that wasn't fair to a child who had only tried to muddle through in situations dictated by adults that were never explained. Julian couldn't undo what had been done to him, but if there was one thing he _could_ do, it was to reach into the past and offer Jules a comforting hand.

All of this would be too difficult to explain, especially to one of the people that had been the cause of it all. Maybe Nerys would understand, or someone like Garak or any of the other lost children that had inhabited this station, but for now it was still a relatively new thought that needed further analysis. Maybe his dreams would be helpful in the end. Maybe his mind was trying to tell him something through that girl. If only he knew...

“Mum,” he said suddenly. “Do you... remember. When I was seven. Richard and I were stuck in that storm, with the girl. And she died.”

“I remember it. Your father told me all about it and you... it kept you up, night after night...”

“Did I... or he... did either of us ever mention to you what she was called?

She shook her head. “I don't know. I'll think, but I'm not sure I'll remember. I'm sorry.”

It wasn't the apology he'd always hoped for, but he could pretend that it was meant for more than just this. “Get home safely.”

They stood, awkwardly not hugging. Julian had previously always waited for a signal that he was meant to, but Amsha seemed unsure about whether she ought to give that signal now. Eventually she just smiled and boarded her runabout, promising to write to him. He waved until the door shut and made to head up to ops when he almost ran straight into Kira.

“Dinner?” she asked and he gratefully accepted after his missed lunch.

____________________

“You never contacted me for a medical emergency, so I'm assuming it went... well?” asked Kira tentatively as they ate. They'd decided to get something to take away and were eating as they walked along the upper floor of the promenade, watching ships enter and leave the wormhole.

“It... went,” said Julian, feeling as exhausted as if he'd done major surgery for the past few hours. “I realised a couple of things.”

“What kind of things?”

“I think... I think I have to leave the station,” he said. “Not immediately,” he added quickly at the expression on her face. “I still don't know what I want to do. Or even what I'm _allowed_ to do with my augmented status. I've been... avoiding getting into that legal battle. And I'd want to wait until you've got your promotion anyway.”

“Nobody knows if-” she began to protest, but ended up just rolling her eyes at his grin. “Yes, it _might_ happen, it's all under wraps at the moment so I can't tell you about it. Yet.”

“Yet.”

“So what made you realise you wanted to leave?” she said, changing the subject.

“I think... DS9 just became a safe place for me. But now with everyone gone, it's... well, you know.”

She nodded and waited for him to continue.

“I think I was waiting for a sign that I'll be okay if I get off the station. That even if I'm not here, you won't be gone. All of the last seven years won't be gone, or meaningless or...” he let out a sigh. “I really never had people that I was close to in this way. It's hard to let go of that.”

“I know,” said Kira quietly. “Even in the Shakaar cell, it was different. We didn't want to get close to people like that, because we were all so sure we were dead anyway. On Deep Space Nine I wanted us to... live.” She cleared her throat. “So what was your sign?”

“Amsha and Richard are no longer married, and my mother is moving to a different planet. It felt like something was telling me that if she can move on then so can I.”

“And you're... okay with it? Your parents splitting up?”

He huffed out a breath. “I sometimes wonder what would've happened if they'd done so when I was still a child. Maybe before the augmentations. She told me that she was never ashamed of me, but I don't know if she would've had the same goals in mind without his influence. Maybe I could've simply been... but I don't know. I don't really know who my mother is to be honest.”

“You wouldn't have come to DS9 though. And we'd have been worse off for it. Out here on the frontier.”

“A compliment, Colonel?" he smiled.

“I compliment you all the time!” she spluttered, then punched him lightly when he started to laugh.

“Ow, alright, I admit, you're much softer than you pretend.”

 _Soft,_ she mouthed at him, shaking her head. “So you two sort of sorted things out?”

“I don't know if that's quite the right phrasing. Reached some kind of catharsis possibly. Or the beginning of it at least. I think I needed to come to terms with myself and... all if it. And that I can't really expect them to change. I can _hope_ for it, but whether or not they do is no longer really my concern, because they don't have any control over my life any more. I think with my mother... maybe we'll be able to meet on a different footing in future. We'll see. But I'm not trying to run away from what they did any more. Leaving DS9... it's not because I'm running away.”

“It's not,” confirmed Kira, as much to herself as to Julian and grabbed his shoulder, steadying herself and comforting him, as they gazed out at the wormhole. “We'll be back here one day.”  
  
  
  
  
\------ The End --------


End file.
